


Miss Anona

by skyeofdragons



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Alcohol, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Sex Changes, Changelings, Class Issues, Eberron (Setting), Fantastic Racism, Gen, Grey and Grey Morality, Hetero? Fluff, Inappropriate Emotional Reactions, Lynching, Minor Character Death, Orphans, Post-Canon, Violence, character backstory, identity theft, minor fluff, other character mentions - Freeform, single character focus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 20:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7947709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyeofdragons/pseuds/skyeofdragons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Backstory for my Changeling, Anona. Contains mentions of war, death, general gruesomeness, people being racist assholes, the usual. It's D&D origination.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miss Anona

My parents were terrified for me, as far as I remember.   
It’s not like I hurt them. I simply was.  
They hoped for something like them. They were passive, stuck, fearful, for some reason. They could have changed but never did.  
They gave me a name. They told me to be the same like them. Be human.  
They told me to never change.  
When I did, the people rioted.  
They told me to change, and run away, and hide.  
They said they’d meet me again one day.

.....

I have a lot going for me, especially my looks. I never got caught for things. It’s hard to say who stole a purse when nobody looks like who you saw.  
People take pity on you when you’re beautiful. People don’t look at you if you’re ugly.  
Money is really easy to find if you follow the merchants. You learn to wonder at the gods when everyone you see is haggard and cold and you can look up to see the great airships, the merchants and nobles warm and safe. 

One night, there was a party overhead. We watched, we dreamed, imagining what the fine foods must be like, my friends, all of us together. It was so bright, so beautiful. I wished for the luxury they had. I wished for my parents back, or at least the comfort there was when I had a house. It was a dim memory. We huddled under the balcony, imagining the velvet dresses, the jewels… We wondered what the thing that was falling was, hoped it a star, a heaven-sent shard. We watched and watched, cold, shaking. And then we realized it was right overhead.

Toms didn’t move fast enough. I didn’t know plates could kill people. It lodged solidly in his skull. He fell over. I don’t think he felt anything. You would be surprised how heavy silver is, especially when it’s travelling from a private airship docked overhead. 

I never regretted going back to find the plate still there. By then, he was cold, just like the grey snow and the grey stone. Blood ran around his head, flowing into a great dark circle around it, blackish red in the ship shadow’s edge, frozen before it could clot, a perfect mirror with swirls and eddies of life caught beneath its smooth top. I had to step in it to reach the plate. I whispered I was sorry. I tugged the plate out of his head. I backed out the way I had come. It was all crimson in the moonlight, as the great bulk shifted in the night currents. Crimson, and one set of footprints going in. The frozen crust gleamed. The divide in his skull frosted over, beautiful as any winter window on red church stained glass. And it was quiet, except the sounds of the city, the great city that did not know someone had died so early, the wretched city that wouldn’t have cared anyway.

......

There was a war. I was never sure how big, exactly, the world was, and how big this war was, when it started. They grabbed us off our streets and told us we had two choices: Soldier or Prisoner. 

At first it wasn’t so bad in our little training world. I was fed, and clothed, and there was a bed. Some people complained and I was quiet. That was a good thing. They told us how to polish and sharpen weapons, how to march, how to fight. I couldn’t swing a sword like some of the others so they gave me little knives, a bow and arrow. They told me to use these. I learned to aim and strike with precision, and was much better there. I couldn’t haul as much as the others. I was accurate with a bow, though, and they soon had me holding a flag in the crook of my leg and shoulder. They gave me arrows that burned with white flame and told me to strike them on the ground, then shoot, at the flags of the other people, on the other side of the field. 

They told me the flag had always to stand. That the flag was important, that it was courage and valor and it told the soldiers where to go. They told me never fall.

Gods know I tried.

There were men trying to flee the other way. Warforged and zealots alike trampled them underfoot. There were boys barely growing hair on their face screaming for their mothers with blades run through them. There were savage stares in the ones left, who understood it was fight or die. Fight or die. Fight, and die anyway. I did my job. I listened to the orders and rushed them to their deaths. I fired pure flame at the enemy. I watched them burn. I watched us burn.

I wasn’t fast enough. Once, was all it took. I remember trying to get my hand out of the quiver as a half-orc rushed at me, streaming blood, madness in his eyes. He knew he would die. He wanted to take as many out as he could. I tried to step away, my foot tangled around the arm of a deadman as he swung. It must have been what saved me, death’s grip from its own. He cut through my armor like butter and I remember hitting bloodsoaked ground as I discovered that my guts look just the same as everyone else’s.

Laying in the sun was the hardest part of it all. Blood is so sticky when it covers you. I must have gone into shock. I don’t remember much. Just, quiet, and birds. Their heads were red, and they were already fat, but they began to try and pick anyway, keeping wrinkled skin dyed, laughing in great greasy circles with their black cloaks, black feathers, feather ruffs of macabre red-splattered white... Noble birds. Birds like nobles. I remember hands on me, and squinting into something that wasn’t human. “She’s alive?” Eyes on a slant like the downward spinning world I was clutching to. Magic, and I felt fire. Apparently, nobody tells you it’s painful to have your guts put back in, even with healing magic. The warforged picked me up. I passed out.

I must not have changed back. I’m sure I would have been executed if they knew. We’re spies, clearly, even if we run on the front lines. There’s so much useful information amongst miserable bastards. I’m thankful for the cleric, and the metal one that brought me off that field.

I didn’t see the cleric much once I was shooed out to be amongst the archers for a while. I tried to find the warforged but company didn’t much like it when you tried to mingle with constructs, but I learned the day we were released he’d gotten his freedom, too.

Somehow I found myself in a group of crazies, all of us. The tiefling, white like snow. I only ever saw blood on him once. It was surreal. Wasn’t his- his blood is milk, and yet anything but it. I wonder if little Grub knew vitriol was white. Red is so garish on a straight white canvas… The warforged was clever. I don’t know if it was age, or something I would never understand, but he took everything the same way. One day after another. It must be that he can’t change. Since he knows he can’t, he refuses to allow it bother him. I admired it. Every week that passed it was getting harder to stay in one body. Grub always watched the Warforged with such interest. I miss his wide eyes, still wondering at the world despite his age, always wanting to find something new and learn. I wish he’d been more careful, but what could you ask of a gnome? Someone in my archery lane always complained. He was loud, and obnoxious, but when it came to berserkers on the line he would stand there and shoot like an idiot. A headstrong, admirable idiot. I did too. You don’t leave your comrades to the gnolls.

.......

When the war ended I made my way back to Breland with the other haggard faces and wide eyes. It must have been a pathetic horde. If anything, half of us looked like Karrnathi zombies, and the other half those who just fought them. I didn’t recognize many, but while faces might be my strong point, I didn’t honestly deal with many of the people there, given my regiment had been just about wiped.

I thought of going to Sharn, but something balked at that. So soon? From one toil to another? I had no family waiting there, no friends to speak of. I never did. They all knew me by a different face, a different act. I wanted a rest from it all, if even just a moment. So I went back to where I remembered.

“My little moonface, you shouldn’t be eating the acorns. They will grow up in your belly and you will be a tree.” Bitter, nasty green-opal things, like how the leaves of dandelions taste when you haven’t boiled out the sticky white sap, looking like tiny gems in faerie caps.

“They aren’t for dinner, they’re to buy us dinner.” Running around in fall, digging in leaves for the things the size of my hand. Small hands.

It didn’t take much sidewise-questioning to hear that was Mistmarsh.

The town isn’t very large, and certainly isn’t much more so from all the fighting. I didn’t remember enough to be able to pick any particular place out… It just felt like a good place, somehow. Like something out of a pleasant dream. Nobody recognized me, but I don’t suppose it was anything too out of the ordinary. There were a few caravans, all of which seemed to be full of traders, bringing velvet sacks full of coin, leaving with them full of the odd acorns. Late Olarune, and the hardiest of peoples were still gathering the last of Winter bounties.

As a whole, the people of the town were welcoming, and though none of them knew me, they were happy enough to see a soldier come home and, though they’d heard the news already, seeing me and a few other companions all wander back in seemed to really drive the point home.

It certainly felt nice to be out of the body I’d been in for so long, though. Soon enough I was out of my human miss skin, and was wandering along with three others as some happy-go-lucky half-elf I’d seen cut down somewhere.

Jakobs and Perion and Dahl, who I had travelled with, were all quickly ushered back to their homes by their families. I told them I’d be around town, and managed to convince the innkeeper that, even though it was out of season, I’d be good to have around and was willing to work for room and food, and cover whatever else I’d needed from my pay from service. Helping brace and thatch roofs against snow is hardly a glamorous job, but if it required getting to a high place and staying there, I was rather good at not falling over. Just something you pick up when your whole city is vertical.

They were interested in stories of my childhood, of course, which isn’t exactly something I had planned on telling strangers. I didn’t tell much to the adults- They seemed to understand why I might not want to, at least- But children are very good at pestering people and eventually, to shut them up, I relented.

I told them of wizards who made their living saving people who fell off bridges, who could, with a word, save life, shouting a simple “Fthyrfall!” to those who would begin a plummet. I left out how plenty of people who couldn’t pay them were allowed to break like eggs against the stone.

I told them of Shifters and their beautiful, wild dances, where they could seem to bring Balinor down to howl and dance and chase with them. I left out the games, gladitorial, where I had seen heated arguments go from words to ever-final actions.

I told them of the great churches to the Sovereign Host, to the Silver Flame, that gleamed and burned in bright sunlight and made you wonder at their splendor, made your heart swell in pride to know what wonderful deities there were, guarding all who sought their hand. I “forgot” to mention the priests with their hands in everyone’s pie, the bigots who went after anyone who claimed their bright burning god was anything but the best, the ones who spoke of virtue even as they stank of bull’s shit. The altars in the Cogs, where people paid blood to the Dark Six, to each other, to demons, too, I politely didn’t mention. Such things are unwanted from guests.

All in all, at first, they were plenty glad to have me. It is when they asked me of my war stories, especially the littlest ones, that I was unsure of what to say.

They wanted me to tell stories of great battles where we of Brelish pride stomped what is now Darguun’s monstrous hordes, or of fighting Silver Flame paladins that took down Lycanthropes, with swords of silver and hearts of gold, of Aundarian wizards who could call hellfire from the sky and wipe out seas of undead in righteous carnage. They wanted to hear of arrows darkening the sky and carrying Cyre to Khyber, of what must be my own glorious kills, for I had come back a Hero. They wanted all the glory and none of what I had to tell them.

I held nothing back from stories of Karrnath’s undead. Something soulless like those things, empty eyes and silent maws, reeking of rot and death-! No, those are welcome to be purged, so gruesome details of good Warforged tearing through them in eerie, silent battles, of Thrane’s chargers with great lances and scimitars and horses outfitted with spikes, of berserk Shifter warriors crossing nation’s lines to guard their world-- they were bright and knightly like anything that fought wickedness should be.

“But didn’t you fight Cyre? And Thrane? And Aundair?”

How is one supposed to explain that? Yes and no. Sometimes they were bad, sometimes they were good. You had always to wear your Brelish blue on your arm, and sometimes it would be the death of you, and sometimes it would be what saved you. Sometimes, the warforged could hardly be told apart, with their paint and markings obscured by blood or wounds, so you stood on edge until they gave proof of loyalty or had been properly cleaned by the camp mage to reveal infiltrator or friend. Sometimes I was delighted that assholes from my own company had been slaughtered, and how do you tell someone of the infighting in the camps, of humans being braggarts and self-righteous jerks towards goblin contingents, or the sudden shifts of trade from small treaties and alliances, how you might fight your ally the next day? How do you explain that Cyre wasn’t bad, not all the time, and that there was no way they all deserved to disappear so suddenly- Mothers and fathers, and animals with no alliances, and even children like them?

Suddenly all the orphan’s jokes of “You’ll understand when you’re older” weren’t so funny anymore.

.......

In Summer, then, I helped with the crops, as much as I really could. With no experience actually farming, I was basically the one who sat on the watchtower and brought down birds and small animal pests- but as far as that went, I was quite good, and would often end up with more dead animals than I knew what to do with. This went on for a while- me, watching the plants grow, waiting for the birds to come down, or the rabbits to come sniffing, and soon enough there weren’t so many. I would help with weeding in the mornings, and rest when the noon sun came and the dampness rose out of the dirt and bothered life, before going back to helping once more when it wasn’t quite so awful out. Those little plants worked their hardest to grow, and it was amazing, at least for me- Having never really been out in such a place- To watch these little hard brown seeds sprout into green tendrils and stalks and grow, seemingly with every minute. Then it would be time to harvest- The days were becoming shorter, and the little nubs of fruit were growing and colouring and weighing down the plants.

Again, I wasn’t quite as strong as the ones doing this their whole lives long- They could haul basket after basket of tomatoes and lift pumpkins as big around as barrel chests, while I struggled to keep a good grip of ones only slightly larger than my own head. Peas, and their little fuzzy pods, I had a much better time with, so they shooed me out of trying to thresh or scythe down the wheat and had me gather and tie it up instead. I was glad I had been able to help, and so was the family I had been living with for a while, their middle daughter especially.

Their eldest had been married as soon as the first summer harvests were over, and the youngest was being courted already- But this middle daughter, being completely average, kept worrying that no-one cared for her. I think she latched on to me first, sometime that Spring when I was still proving I wasn’t some moron, and honestly I had been just enjoying her company that while. And to be honest I don’t think her parents had minded me all that much- Certainly there were worse prospects than I, even if I was already a half-elf, and still had much to learn about this whole growing things business. But she was honest and kind and… Well, it doesn’t matter now.

It was early Rhaan, and the first of the early acorns seemed to be falling, and the whole area was busy with traders and what were probably seasonal people, all searching for fortunes in the dirt. While certainly I would be viewed as one of those seasonals, I offered to go along when my limited knowledge and lack of strength made me more of a burden than anything- “You can show me how to do these things when it’s less of a rush to get everything stored,” I explained, to which they agreed. So out to the forest, then, with a pack of things on my back and a pack of people all going along with me. A fiveday would be spent, and then everyone would come back to rest and sell for one, and then back to the forest for another five days. Of course, we all had to stick around for Boldrei’s Feast- That was absolutely a given.

The town drank and sang, and laughed, having great fun, telling favorite stories. Hunts and great harvests, and Perion in particular felt the need to share some stories of seemingly exquisite moments of heroism on the part of the great Breland, though it made me somehow uncomfortable to hear truths so twisted and discoloured for simple entertainment. Perhaps he simply saw things differently- Perhaps to him, indeed, invisible and arbitrary lines truly did designate one being to be so very different from another that it became not man but animal. I’d have to disagree, of course, but on the day I can change into a raccoon I suppose I will have to stop eating meat too.

“Ah caurse we did OUR part in th’ warr too,” belched the particularly quarrelsome smith who nobody challenged. Eyes turned his way and some groans were heard, some looks of shame and worry our way, and some of interest and even pride.

“Seeah, we- WE smoked out some SPIES who musta been workin’ for sumthin’ awful,” he laughed, ever-soot-smudged visage curling into a grin. “A coupla them, tryna disrupt the acorn flow t’ fuck wit’ our materials flow! They was disguised as normal peopl’n’ ERYthin!”

He began to describe it in frankly lurid detail- How one of the children came up to his wife crying about a monster that could steal their face, and how the woman took her fright to the other townsfolk. He seemed to take pride in describing the march to the house, and hauling out the two culprits by their collars, watching them beg innocence and be hung as traitors and spies anyway. Mothers covered children’s ears as he mocked-out their gurgles and screams as they writhed on gallows and described the “herrific transfermayshun” when their eyes and hair and skin went white once they stopped moving, and how they torched the house and left the bodies to the crows.

Hardly appropriate material for a feast.

.......

I wandered to the hanging tree later that night, and sure enough the last fraying remnants of rope still dangled around the limbs, two tightened nooses, side by side. On the ground, buried in the leaves, there were still some small bones, crumbling and dry, fingers or toes perhaps, even teeth or a vertebrae. I looked up to the swaying ropes, drifting in the evening breeze, and wondered what they thought as they scrabbled for their last breaths. I reached up on my tall half-elf tip-toes and brushed my fingers against one of the ropes, and it was cold as though winter still lived in it. I watched those ropes for a while longer, until footsteps behind me caused me to spin with my hand to the dagger I hadn’t learned to let go of- And warm almond eyes and soft dark hair framed Min’s startled face in the twilight. I’d spooked her, and immediately I apologized for it.

“I hate it when Monroe tells that story,” she sighed, and looked up at the swinging ropes. “I can hardly imagine they deserved to be hung for it. My mother says they weren’t even guilty of anything.”

“Yeah,” was all I could manage. What is one even supposed to say?

“Anyway, Tarin. We should probably go home now. We don’t have those ever-burning streetlights like you did in Sharn,” she laughed, and I laughed too on the way back.

.......

The days passed in blurs- It was so fast, between working from sun up to sun down with all the gathering and fussing, that I hardly noticed the rest of Rhaan pass by, and the only news it wsa Sypheros already was a sudden blowing of a horn before the crack of dawn. I remember asking angrily what was going on, and getting shushed for language, for it was a holy day and- Already a celebration to be had, then! The little church to the Silver Flame had its sermons and prayers and solemn celebrations, before everyone treated it like other holidays and just messed around. I wasn’t in the mood to see the smith again, and so I spent time in that church, and looked at the books contained therein, scripture about a Tira?, of a great fight and snakes with feathers more lovely than the shattered heavens when stars strike them just right. The illustrations, at least, were lovely, though I didn’t quite understand some of how this god seemed to work. People received visions? But how were they to know it was a god and not just some mage, or even the work of those wicked drugs some of us had sold to stay alive? And certainly you couldn’t ask a god for proof of divinity… But it’s not like I was going to question it if it made people really just act better. That’s all you could ask for anyway.

Another book caught my eye, for nothing less than its age. Old, and huge, and as I looked in it, all it was full of was names and dates. Birth, death. A registry of sorts. A morbid sort of curiosity moved my hands, until finally I was only a few years back.

‘Isidore Schimbare, b…?... d. 20 Sypheros 983’  
‘Nicala Schimbare, b…?... d. 20 Sypheros 983’  
‘Ren Schimbare, daughter to Isidore and Nicala Schimbare, b. 2 Sypheros 978. d. 20 Sypheros 983’

Ren Schimbare… So a little one had died that night as well. I shut the book and went back to looking through the little prayers and such. If they wanted to say Ren Schimbare had died that night, who was I to say otherwise? I wasn’t her. She might be me, but it doesn’t work in reverse, after all. A ghost is not the same as the person it was born from.

.......

The oddest thing about then, however, was that all the people who had been out gathering those green-shining acorns had all come back in town, and were milling about the inn I had spent a while in, drinking and laughing. I asked one of them about it, and the girl laughed.

“You must really be new, huh. Don’t you know all the nastiest things that go bump in the night live in that forest this month? I hear it’s the time all the covens do their dirty work and kill anyone who goes in there. Some guys try to poke around in the day, but nobody’s in that forest at night. And hell if I’mma make that trip for a few silver, that ain’t worth my head.”

Everything went a little faster with their help- They would offer to bring water and drive oxen if their inn expenses would be lessened, and I soon figured out how such large crops could be actually brought in with only so many townsfolk. Either way, I was in only minor demand, and I resolved to attempt to build my strength with some of those exercises I had always failed at before, in the army.

Pumpkins and potatoes and beans and gourds, fish coming in from the little creeks, the fat birds gorging on the kernels left in chaff, irked hogs and even a couple deer caught out too far from the forest, all had to be prepared and readied for the winter, stocked up and shipped to cities and merchants, instead of in long lines to fronts far away. The tiny town boomed with activity, and once again the nights closed out with the ache of effort in your bones and the sluggish determination of pride hauled you out of bed at the crack of dawn. There are muscles I didn’t know I had aching. There were muscles I didn’t know pigs had needing to be butchered and smoked. Min and I shared a pig’s tail, and it was no worse than some of what I had eaten before, though she seemed surprised I hadn’t been disgusted by the idea of eating it. I braided garlic and onions and packed apples and potatoes, and was just as interested in how the food was prepared as any of the curious children, and had my hands smacked with spoons just like one if I tried to get a bite of squash stew to myself and them too early. Sweet summer corn had to be ground, and wheat too, and seeds had to be carefully cleaned and dried for next season. Bird feathers were packed into blankets, houses needed fixing before the winter came, and so did storehouses and barns and little coops. A chick I tried to shoo back in one I had been re-shingling pecked my nose instead. I was happy.

.......

Then came Wildnight. We had just finished the bulk of some harvest, and before the frost had begun to turn anything mushy and black. People were celebrating. I was too. It’s not often you’re really appreciated, and seeing as I was quickly becoming a useful part of the whole I figured that, despite everything, I might have a chance at a normal life. I’d say hi to my old buddies in Sharn, come back with something nice for Min from the city…

I don’t drink, and I got some shit for it in the army, but it is not wise for something that needs to keep in control to allow themselves to get out of it. Most of everyone else, however, does not seem to share that same sentiment, Min’s brother included. We had been getting a little close, perhaps more than we should have been, but I hardly imagined it was any kind of justified to grab someone by their hair and throw them out of their chair for a few kisses. I remember pain in my scalp, and a roar of “OFFA MY SISTAH YOU MUTT,” before the room hushed. I stood, and grabbed the top of my head, about ready to snarl a rather nasty comment about his own appearance- And then I noticed the clump of hair tangled in his fingers… And so did everyone else.

Soft sandy blonde had shimmered into silver.

My eyes caught the shock in everyone else’s as they all turned to me, and then there was a soft thunk and my ears were ringing. I was on the floor. Monroe was over me, mouthing something, holding a splintered ale mug, and Min was backing away shaking her head. Perion was staring in shock, and Dahl was reaching for his weapon. 

Hearing returned and Monroe was screaming something about good-for-nothing-insertheres and Min was beginning to cry. Jakobs had run, likely to get something. I did what any sane thing would and ran. I ran like there was a demon at my heels, out of that little town, with the clothes on my back and the little satchel I always carried. A pebble thunked by me and then an arrow, and it seemed my heart would certainly explode. I feel bad for deer and rabbit when they run now. I ran to the only place I could be sure they wouldn’t follow, stole a horse and ran it close to those woods as it would go, and I hid that night, like a criminal again, in that forest where the air itself seems blacker than coal.

Day was hardly better, once I’d survived that night. The horse had long since bolted home, for animals are far wiser than we and I don’t know how some of those things back there didn’t come kill me. Day brought merely greyness from the black, misty and dim, and I wondered if I was somehow in Dolurrh, if I soon would fade to nothing for whatever awaited in oblivion. I wandered out, eventually. That grey-black misty hell was gone, cloaked again in its mystery, and I had no intention of returning to that forest or that town.

I found some gnomes headed towards Zilargo, and they agreed to take me along with them to the lightning rail station, provided I did the dirty work they didn’t want to along the way. It was better than walking.

Then, it was poor man’s class all the way to the city. I could easily see those spires rising out of the dirt from leagues away, climbing up like great claws that want to scratch the heart out of Siberys again, the massive bulk of an animal palm made from brick and blood below those long fingers and talons. I’m back again, and it reeks of the same rank sweat it always did, always have, always will. I do not want to be here long. It is not the place for me. There’s a little shimmering green acorn in my pocket, and I touch it and know I don’t belong there either. Perhaps I shall travel. Perhaps I’ll find a different city, or simply be a fool and try to be dramatic on some airship, crash and burn to death. I don’t think I should settle, though. Clearly I have no luck with that. Either way, I should soon be at the inn I recommended we all meet in, and perhaps I’ll have some good news and familiar faces. I just have to make sure I have the right face on first, and I think I shall cut my hair down short. Just in case.


End file.
